The Empire Strikes First... 14 songs that are fresh, focused, and absolutely alive in the way that great rock "n" roll energizes everything it touches. It"s been a long road from their early-80s beginnings, but these days, the primary concerns of Graffin and Gurewitz are not the band"s intricate (and subtle) years-long evolution; they"re first and foremost topical songwriters focused on domestic chaos and its global manifestation. Bad Religion is, after all, the outfit that, during the first Gulf War in 1991, shared a Maximum Rock "n" Roll split seven-inch with radical MIT professor Noam Chomsky, who, like them, is locked into the tense present and dedicated to exposing the forces who lie and disguise to deepen and enforce human misery.